The Murdered Captain
by Kuroi-cho-tsuki-shiro
Summary: She may have been found innocent in the eyes of Soul Society; she may even have been moments from escape, but, for Rukia, the nightmare is about to start again. A series of shorts based on the story of Bleach from Rukia's point of view. 37
1. Chapter 1

In an empty street, in the far west of the _sereitei, _their flight ended

The figure that stepped into their path, sword drawn, wore a sleeveless _haori: _a black man with long hair braided into a mantle of dreadlocks, his bare arms tightly muscled. He had come from nowhere, but, suddenly, his presence was everywhere. Renji, who had been tugging Rukia along by the hand, pulled her close and reached for his sword.

"Abarai Renji."

"Tousen-_taichou."_

"You are aiding and abetting criminals. You are to come with me. Now."

"No."

"I don't believe I gave you a choice." He swung his sword down and planted the tip in the dusty ground, and the air around him began to roar.

Rukia threw up her hands to cover her ears as the sound increased, shaking loose dust and mortar from the buildings around them. Renji's hold on her was so tight that it hurt her, while, all around, ribbons of energy began to rise up from the earth. They were like spirit ribbons, the threads of souls, but, so far as she could tell, they belonged to no living thing. They encircled the three _shinigami, _warping the air as they spiralled upwards. Not just the air. They were changing the very space around them. Within moments, Rukia could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet. It had lost all substance and the only constant in that storm was Renji's arm around her body, pinning her to his side. Then there was a sense of falling. Her feet scraped across stone, and she realised that she was moving with some speed. All at once, the ribbons fell away and she and Renji sprawled forward onto a plateau, red with the light of sunset. She could feel grit and broken rock against her knees, but it was Renji's exclamation that made her raise her head and look around:

"The _sokyoku!" _

And there before her was the vast plateau and the broken instrument of her execution. The nightmare was starting again, except that now the scene had changed. A strong wind was blowing in from the mountains, hauling along silvery white clouds that were piling like snowdrifts in the horizon. The crowd of soul-reapers who had come to witness her death were gone and, in their place, stood three figures, their robes stained gold in the fading light.

Three captains.

There was Tousen of Ninth Division, who had used _kido _to bring them here, Gin of Third Division, who stood at the base of the _sokyoku, _turned away from them as if to guard an imagined perimeter and, approaching them now, Captain Aizen of Fifth Division. The man who had been reported dead.

Renji pulled Rukia to her feet as Aizen approached. He was just as she remembered him: quiet, amiable. A soft smile on his lips. A gentleness to his movements.

"Please hand over Kuchiki Rukia," he said, his voice sweetly reasonable.

Renji's hold on her tightened. She had started to tremble. The sheer power that was rolling off of the man in front of her was making her body heavy; the pressure was building in her head. She wondered if this really was Aizen or if the reports had been true and this was an imposter, like the hollow that had taken over Kaien's body. If her instincts were right, then he was still holding back some of his _reiatsu. _"Abarai Renji," Aizen addressed the vice-captain who held her: "You have no part in this. If you relinquish her now, I will let you go."

"You're not having her!"

"Renji," she whispered, both moved and horrified by his defiance. Aizen's spiritual pressure was like a sheer force of nature and Renji's words like a declaration of war on a whirlwind. But he knew that too because, as Aizen advanced, he took a step back, retreating, his sword angled across both their bodies. Another step back. Buying them time.

"I'll ask you one more time. Will you hand over Kuchiki Rukia?"

"No."

"Alright then."

Rukia didn't see him move. Indeed, Aizen's progress across the plateau, until then, had been marked by a casual lack of urgency, but now his figure blurred. The next thing she knew, Renji's body rocked backwards and there was the wet sound of a blade punching through flesh.

Aizen froze with his sword still embedded in the younger man's shoulder. Renji's eyes rolled up in pain. With an expression of placid curiosity the Captain of Fifth Division withdrew his blade in a single, precise motion that jerked Renji forward. Blood splashed into Rukia's face as her friend crumpled, pulling her down with him. His hold on her never let up. He was on his knees now, his arm still wrapped around her waist. She twisted in his grip and pressed her palm against the wound in his shoulder, but the blood was pumping too fast.

"Renji, please," she whispered. His eyes were focussed again, trained on Aizen. She might have said more had a sound like a crack of thunder not ripped through the sky. Suddenly, a woman's voice was speaking all around them:

"This is Vice-Captain Kotetsu of Fourth Division. This is an emergency transmission to all members of the _Gotei _Thirteen and to the _ryoka. _All of what I am about to tell you is true." Rukia could feel the _kido _crackling in the air about them; the thin lines of a communication net, carrying the woman's words: "The Central Forty-six are dead. I repeat: the Central Forty-six are dead. They were murdered before the crimes of Kuchiki Rukia were brought to trial and those orders are henceforth repealed. Sosuke Aizen, Kaname Tousen and Ichimaru Gin are now wanted for the murder of the governing council. They will be held to account for their actions."

"You bastard," growled Renji as the broadcast ended. Aizen had taken a step closer. "What did you want with her?"

"What did I want? What do I want? Are you going to let her go or not?"

"Of course not! Shut up, Rukia," he added as she started to object.

"Alright then, go ahead and keep a hold of her, but you'll lose that arm of yours." His figure blurred. Rukia flinched, but the blow that should have fallen never came and, instead, metal clashed with metal.

"Ichigo!"

For a brief and nightmarish instant, she thought the human boy had taken the brunt of the attack because she could no longer see his thick butcher's-knife blade. Then she realised that the _zanpakuto _he carried had changed. A long, tapering black sword now held back the force of Aizen's strike. His _shihakusho _had altered too: it was still recognisably a _shinigami _uniform, but instead of the kimono over his _juban_, he was dressed in a full-length black coat that split and flared out at the top of his waist. The lining was blood red.

The energy that spilled off of him was different even to that which she had felt on the _sokyoku. _It was darker. Stronger. She recalled Urahara's words to her back in the human world; he had told her that this boy was dangerous. She had thought then that he meant Ichigo's power was too great to be wielded by a human, that he ran the risk of its burning out of control. Now she wondered if he'd meant the opposite: that the danger would manifest the very moment he gained control of that strength, the moment he realised what he was and what he could do.

He had gritted his teeth against the weight of Aizen's blade pushing down on him:

"Renji, I told you to get her out of here!"

"There were some unforseen challenges," said the _shinigami, _lurching to his feet. Rukia wrapped her arms around his waist, partially to bear his weight and partially to let him take hers. Her head was swimming with the pressure.

"As for you," Ichigo said, his voice a warning as he turned towards Aizen: "You did this to Rukia. You sent Byakuya and Renji to the human world. You locked her in that tower. It was all you."

"Ichimaru Gin!" called Aizen. If anything, he sounded amused: "I thought you were in charge of stopping anyone getting in my way."

"Sorry, Aizen-_taichou. _You said that I should stop any _shinigami _climbing to the _sokyoku. _But this one's a human." The Third Division Captain smiled at his own joke.

"Well, no matter." Aizen's figure blurred and Ichigo staggered forward as the weight that had been bearing down on his sword suddenly vanished. The Fifth Division captain reappeared some distance away, between Gin and Tousen: "You've grown stronger, Ichigo Kurosaki, but you must be able to sense the massive power difference between us. You cannot fight me."

"There must be something we can do," said Renji in a low voice.

"Yeah, we're going to fight him. Together. In _bankai."_

"What?" whispered Rukia, but Ichigo had turned back to his opponent:

"On my word," he said. Rukia saw him steel himself with a deep breath. "Now!"

Renji raised his sword and, with his other hand, pushed Rukia backwards, away from his body. She caught just the edge of his spiritual pressure as it was released: an energy a hundred or a thousand times greater than that of the man she knew and yet it was his. Of that, she had no doubt. Dust spiralled up from the ground at his feet as the sword he held transformed. _Bankai, _the full release. The blade itself disappeared. In its place, the air and the sky all around was filled with a writhing mass of bones.

In _bankai, _a weapon was capable of manifesting itself in an entirely new form, that of the most potent aspect of the bearer's soul. For Renji, it appeared as a skeletal beast with the body of a snake and the fanged skull of a baboon. It had no flesh nor hair save for a ruff of red fur about its neck. The boney segments of its body connected by glowing threads of _reiatsu._

As if echoes of this manifestation had hooked themselves onto Renji's figure, he now stood, bare-chested, with a fur stole across his shoulders and a string of white baboon's teeth around his neck. _Bankai _turned the soul inside out, the deepest parts of it taking solid form. Even now, she could see it in Renji. For all his rank, he had never fully outgrown the streets of Rukongai; something of the beast and the scavenger would always remain. For her, it was the imprint of ice, the cold singularity in her own heart. Their souls had been forged in a harsh world. If ever they were tempted to forget, they need only look at the forms their power took.

"Howl, Zabimaru!" Renji roared the sword's incantation in the same moment that Ichigo's figure blurred and reformed blade to blade with Aizen's. The baboon-serpent lunged forward. Rukia couldn't see what happened next because the forms of the three men in combat faded in and out of existence, moving too fast for her to follow. This was Ichigo's _bankai, _she realised: the change in his sword and clothes. He was much faster now. Instead of the violent fluctuations she usually felt in his _reiatsu, _a pitch dark energy now flowed smoothly through his body. Where it leaked out, the ground around him broke apart and shafts of dust skittered into the air, borne up by spiritual pressure.

Yet, despite their extraordinary strength, neither Ichigo nor Renji seemed capable of touching Aizen. Rukia saw Ichigo flung backwards, his _reiatsu _kicking up a sheer of dust where he struck the ground. Aizen dodged Renji's _bankai, _raised his sword and cut straight into the beast's skull.

The wave of pressure that rolled out from that blow reached Rukia on the edge of the plateau. As it broke against her body, she dropped to her knees and put her arms up. A tide of dust followed. It grazed her skin. When she was able to look again, the bones that had formed the serpent's body were scattered across the plain, disarticulate. To her left, Ichigo gasped. His gaze went to Renji, who was doubled up in pain, and his face hardened:

"One shot!" he called to Renji: "We're going to get one shot at this."

"This may hurt, but one more time, Zabimaru," Renji muttered under his breath and, all around him on the battlefield, the serpent's bones lit with spiritual energy. As Rukia watched, they rose into the air and drifted towards each other. One locked to another, forming the animal's long spinal cord. When Renji lifted the hilt of the sword, the whole length of its body flexed into the air like the crack of a whip. "Howl!" he cried and Rukia felt the energy that rushed through him like a storm surge. In the same instant, Ichigo's figure blurred. Aizen's too.

A stark black line appeared down the length of Zabimaru as a sword swept through its body. This time, the bones crumbled as they burst apart. A rain of white stones falling on the plateau.

Aizen reappeared just inches from Renji, his sword thrust forward into the younger man's chest. His movements had been too fast to see, but his last action was to wrench the sword out of Renji's torso and sweep the blade across his throat. The light went out of his eyes. Rukia screamed as blood flowed down his front. Ichigo appeared, just metres away, his face pale. He roared with anger as he turned his sword on Aizen.

His blow should have cut through the captain, head to toe, but it was stopped short, not by the older man's blade, but, instead, by the crook of his finger.

The gentleness of Aizen's facade gave way to an expression of cruel delight:

"Do you see now, the difference between you and I?" he asked and, as he spoke, he sunk his own sword deep into Ichigo's belly. The human's boy's head jerked back; his back arched in a convulsion.

Aizen merely shook him from the sword like a fisherman shaking his catch from a spear.

A silence followed. Rukia still knelt on the edge of the plateau, her mind empty. The three captains approached, their _reiatsu, _a vast weight.

Aizen reached her first. He leant down, hooked his fingers into the collar she wore and lifted her. At his touch, her body fell limp. He wrinkled his nose. "It would be easier for me if you would walk by yourself," he said. Then realisation dawned in his eyes and he smiled: "Ah, I'm sorry. I forgot. The past few months in _seki-seki _will have drained your _reiatsu _to such an extent that you are probably unable to stand this energy. Am I right?" When she didn't answer, he added: "No matter." He held her at arm's length from his body. Any closer and she might have lost consciousness. The tips of her toes touched the plateau beneath. She had just enough strength to lift her head and keep from choking. "You're probably wondering why I brought you here and went to all this trouble," Aizen said as he half-carried and half-dragged her back to the suffocating presences of the other two captains: "My goal was never the _sokyoku _as many believed. Its power is nothing compared to the power I crave. Rather, you were my target, Kuchiki Rukia, or, at least, the power inside you."

His words reached her, even through the fog of _reiatsu: "_There is a limit," he was saying: "To the power it is possible for a _shinigami _to attain. And a limit for a hollow too. There is only one way to surpass these and that is for a soul-reaper to take the power of a hollow. Urahara Kisuke knew this and he was working on a device that would achieve just that, a hundred years ago, Once it was completed though, he knew that there was no way for him to control the power within it. It was dangerous. But he knew of no way to destroy it and so he decided to hide it and the hiding place he chose was you, Kuchiki Rukia. Your soul."

Waking up in a dark alley, a man standing over her, a parasol in one hand, a fan in the other. Kisuke in his ridiculous striped hat, his head cocked on one side as he surveyed her injuries:

"Looks like you could use some help," he had said. The hollow's bite had broken her ribs and scraps of bone had torn into her lungs. She should have died that night, eight days into her mission in the human world, but he had saved her.

"Your _gigai _was no ordinary _gigai, " _Aizen said, taking pleasure in the faint understanding that lit in her eyes: "Did you not notice that, instead of returning, your spiritual pressue was fading, becoming less each day. The _gigai _you were wearing was designed for that, to completely drain the _reiatsu _of its host."

"Bastard," came a familiar voice. Rukia couldn't turn her head, but she recognised it as Ichigo's. His outburst had been weak and she waited to see if he would speak again. The wound had been to his stomach. It might take time to kill him. Aizen smiled over her shoulder at the human boy:

"You can still move. That's very impressive. Since you haven't the strength to stand, you will simply have to watch."

"Aizen!" That was someone else. Rukia couldn't see the man who spoke, but she could sense his _reiatsu. _It was unfamiliar to her. Almost as strong as Aizen's, and she felt the man who held her tense:

"Gin!" snarled Aizen. The white-haired captain, who had tormented her outside the Shrine of Penitence, stepped forward and she was passed into his hands like a parcel exchanged between business partners. Gin held the collar with a casual disregard for the woman wearing it. He tugged her to his side where, as he lowered his hand, she sunk to her knees. The backs of his knuckles pressed against her throat.

Too late, she realised that she couldn't breathe.


	2. Chapter 2

A sharp jolt lifted her to her feet. Her vision was white. Her consciousness returned like a series of thunderclaps. There was Aizen. The plateau. The sky, which had been deep blue only an instant ago, and was now dark and full of rain. How much time had passed, she wondered. It felt as if she'd only blinked, except now she could no longer sense even a trace of _reiatsu _from the two men who had fought for her. Their bodies lay crumpled on the stone. A third was sprawled nearby, his white _haori _marking him as one of the _Gotei _Thirteen captains. A number seven emblazoned on his back. Komamura-_taichou. _She hadn't known him personally. His defeat was just more proof, if it were needed, that the powers of the other Court Guard Divisions were no match for these men. What had they done to themselves, she wondered, to reach this level of power? And what was it that Kisuke had hidden in her own soul that they desired so badly?

She was looking at the world sideways, she realised, the collar digging into the underside of her cheek. Aizen lifted her again so that only her toes were touching the plateau, and he stared hard at her face, speaking to Ichimaru as he did: "Rather defeats the point if you choke her to death, Gin."

"Sorry, Aizen-_taichou."_

"No matter. She seems to have sustained no permanent damage." He smiled again: that gentle, reassuring smile: "Now, where were we? Oh, yes, the _gigai _you wore. Urahara told you that it would completely obscure your spiritual pressure, making it impossible for Soul Society to trace your location, but that was never the purpose of the _gigai. _It was designed to drain the spiritual pressure of the wearer, reducing them, over time, to an ordinary human soul.

"Urahara hid the device he had created, the _hogyoku, _deep within your soul and then tried to transmute your soul into that of a human, with no spiritual powers. It was the safest place for him to hide such a thing. Once you were human, we would have had no chance of finding you.

"I knew I had to locate you before that could happen, so I sent Renji and Byakuya to the human world, under the orders of the Central Forty-six. Yes, Central Forty-six were already dead by then. I killed them months ago, before you even began your commission in the human world. All orders issued since that time came either from me or Tousen or from Gin, who is the only man I have ever considered to be a vice-captain to me." To her left, the smiling, white-haired captain all but squirmed with pleasure at this. "Once word of your execution got out, I suspected Kisuke would send people after you. It was convenient for me. I was able to fake my own death; the blame fell squarely on the heads of the _ryoka _and, while the attention of Soul Society was on them, I brought the execution forward.

"You see, the only way to retrieve the _hogyoku _from your soul is to tear open the soul itself and rip it out, but the only instrument with the power to pierce the soul of a _shinigami _in such a way is the _sokyoku. _At the instant the halberd pierces the body of a soul-reaper, it would obliterate their spirit, leaving just the _hogyoku._

"However, when it became clear to me that the execution might not go according to plan, I knew I had to find another way.

"I visited the archives of the Central Forty-six and reread all of Urahara's research. Just as I thought, he had come up with another way. It is this." As he spoke, he raised his left hand. Before her eyes, the flesh of his palm began to transform: bloating, boiling, laithing down his arm. It seemed as if, for his hand and arm, centuries were passing in mere seconds. The skin decayed, rivulets of putrefaction running over his fingers; they dried into hard carapaces as dessication followed. The skin crumpled like leather. Where it had rotted before her eyes, the decay formed a bone-like shell. The tips of his fingers were now the points of brittle claws.

He watched the transformation with mild interest, then smiled at Rukia. "Just so," he said.

Light engulfed his arm. Monoliths of the same material burst suddenly from the rocky ground around them, until it seemed to her that they were at the centre of a circle of standing stones. He lifted her higher. Her feet no longer touched the ground. "Just so." And he plunged his hand into her chest.

The claws sliced through her. The pain came an instant later. He let go of the collar, but still she hung there, folded across his arm. She could feel his fingers moving inside. They pinched and scraped, then closed over something deep in her rib-cage, where she had always perceived her heart to be.

He tore it out.

Her vision had already faded to grey. The ground, which raced up to meet her, seemed to take forever, though he had dropped her from no more than the height of a man. She landed on her side, the impact jarring through all that was left of her consciousness. But at least the pain was gone. In its place a sense of having been hollowed out.

It had begun to rain. Heavy rain that fell in sheets, so that she was already wet even as she rolled onto her front. She could feel water striking her arms and sliding in rivulets into the folds of her _yukata, _plastering the materials against her body. And, because she could feel it, she surmised that she was still alive.

She sat up carefully, staring round. Immediately before her, Aizen stood. His dessicated left hand now held a tiny orb, no larger than a marble. From this, an intense blue light shone: a generosity of colour that vied with reality. Rukia stared at it a moment before her eyes slid away, up to the captain's face. He was looking at her curiously: "Remarkable," he said. He was studying her chest.

She glanced down. There was a hole through her. There was no blood and the edges were smooth, as if the cut were clean. Still, she gagged to see it and reached out as if she would cover it, losing courage at the last moment; she couldn't bring herself to touch it. It was black. Not a wound at all, but a well filled with shadow and, as she watched, it started to heal itself. First the flesh reknit, drawing itself back together, overlapping and meshing. Then the white silk of the _yukata. _Within less than a minute, there was no sign that it had ever been there. "Trust Kisuke to create a means of retrieving the _hogyoku _that leaves the soul undamaged," commented Aizen. Having watched this miracle, he cleared his throat and turned towards his followers: "Unfortunately for you, Kuchiki Rukia, you are no longer of use to me.

"Gin," he said: "Kill her."


	3. Chapter 3

**If you enjoyed this story, please keep reading as it will continue in "BROKEN SKY," which I will upload to my profile shortly after posting this. :)**

**All my thanks and appreciation to regular readers:**

**Shadewolf7, Truantpony, ForbiddenME, Pinky357, Immortal Vows, Chellythemadhatter, Insomniatic95, Sallythedestroyerofworlds23, UNTensaZangetsu, XDark FangsX, Superlynx, Ichigoforeverlove, Ennaalemap, Makaykay15, Kaze05, Splash into Forever, War90, Yellowwomanonthebrink, Bakane, Night Flower, Hallmarktrinity, Tiffany Park, Snowcrystals, Neristhaed, Splitheart1120, VanillaTwilight4, Nightfur, Happykiller93, Haildance, Ani-mimi, Mysticalphoenix-avalon, Jennyrdr and Goranr.**

**And everyone else who is reading and reviewing. THANK YOU!**


End file.
